China’s long march toward reusable rockets reaches new milestone
The inaugural launch and recovery of the first booster stage of China’s Long March 10B rocket intensifies the country’s spaceflight rivalry with the United States.
By Lee Billings edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier
China’s Long March 10B rocket lifts off from the Wenchang commercial space launch site in the island province of Hainan on July 10, 2026.
Jiang Jurong/VCG/Getty Images
China on Friday took a giant step forward in its ongoing efforts to become a dominant player in 21st century spaceflight by successfully launching and recovering the first stage of its Long March 10B orbital rocket during the vehicle’s maiden flight.
The feat places the nation in an elite club, placing China alongside U.S. aerospace companies SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only organizations on Earth to develop and operate such reusable rockets. And in at least one respect, it shows how China can outperform its Western competitors: No one else has ever achieved such a perfect recovery of the booster’s first stage during a vehicle’s maiden launch.
Built by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a subsidiary of state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the Long March 10B took off July 10 at 12:15 a.m. EDT from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site in the island province of Hainan. About 11 minutes after launch, after the spacecraft orbited an undisclosed satellite payload, the first stage returned to Earth, where it fired its engines to slow and control its descent to a new net-based recovery system on a waiting offshore platform.
On supporting science journalism
If you enjoy this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribe. By purchasing a subscription, you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
“This mission marks the first successful controlled recovery of a launcher by my country and the first in the world [net]-launcher-based recovery,” CASC announced in a subsequent publication on social networks (as translated by Google). “This represents a historic breakthrough for my country in the field of reusable rocket technology and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of my country’s space access capabilities.”
The post also confirmed that China plans to reuse the booster from the inaugural flight on another flight later this year.
Measuring 63 meters and featuring a five-meter-wide payload fairing, the rocket itself looks a bit like SpaceX’s partially reusable workhorse, the Falcon 9, which is seven meters longer but has a smaller 3.7-meter fairing. And unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, as well as Blue Origin’s partially reusable New Glenn vehicle, the Long March 10B has no landing legs. Instead, it relies on four relatively lightweight “landing hooks” to hold on to its catching net.
The rocket, capable of carrying 16,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit, is a commercial variant of the Long March 10A vehicle. This launch vehicle was initially designed to transport crews and cargo to low-Earth orbit destinations such as China’s Tiangong space station. Both vehicles are offshoots of the Long March 10, a gargantuan rocket under development to send Chinese astronauts to the Moon. This is a goal that China has set for 2030, rivaling independent American plans for a crewed lunar return by 2028 via NASA’s Artemis program. Long March 10B, however, is seen as a crucial catalyst for China’s growing efforts to deploy vast megaconstellations of satellites similar to SpaceX’s wildly successful Starlink system, which has passed the milestone to have 10,000 active spacecraft in orbit earlier this year.
Even though today’s flight had encountered obstacles, China still has difficulty other reusable rockets are waiting in the wings. Two other vehicles – the state-developed Long March 12A and the state-sponsored Landspace company’s Zhuque-3 commercial rocket – have each conducted test flights over the past year. However, neither has yet successfully demonstrated booster first stage recovery, and many other Chinese companies are in the early stages of developing reusable rockets. Additional flights of the Zhuque-3 and Long March 12A are expected to take place soon, although the timeline is unclear due to China’s tendency to remain tight-lipped about the details of its future plans.
It’s time to defend science
If you enjoyed this article, I would like to ask for your support. Scientific American has been defending science and industry for 180 years, and we are currently experiencing perhaps the most critical moment in these two centuries of history.
I was a Scientific American subscriber since the age of 12, and it helped shape the way I see the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of respect for our vast and magnificent universe. I hope this is the case for you too.
If you subscribe to Scientific Americanyou help ensure our coverage centers on meaningful research and discoveries; that we have the resources to account for decisions that threaten laboratories across the United States; and that we support budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
In exchange, you receive essential information, captivating podcastsbrilliant infographics, newsletters not to be missedunmissable videos, stimulating gamesand the best writings and reports from the scientific world. You can even give someone a subscription.
There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you will support us in this mission.
